


A Most Unpromising Youth

by etal



Category: A Room With a View - All Media Types, Maurice (1987), Maurice - E. M. Forster
Genre: E.M. Forster - Freeform, Edwardian blow jobs, Edwardian hand jobs, Implied/Referenced Past Non-Con, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-27 10:03:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20758574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etal/pseuds/etal
Summary: Freddy Honeychurch is bored, at Penge.





	A Most Unpromising Youth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ghostcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostcat/gifts).

> This is a grab-bag of both novels and _A Room WIth A View_ (1985) and _Maurice_ (1987). I'm taking a cue from one of the deleted scenes on the _Maurice_ DVD which has Scudder working for the Durhams long before the arrival of Maurice at Penge/Pendersleigh.  
Thanks to expo63 on tumblr, expert keeper of all _Maurice_ knowledge, for discussing these timeline issues with me - if there's anything egregiously wrong in here it's my own fault.  
And thanks, as ever, to Ghostcat for making me dust this off, shouting at me via Maurice gifs until I finished it, and then beta'ing it into sense. This is for her birthday, following the tradition that she has to beta her own gifts.

‘Cecil was the kind of fellow who would never wear another fellow’s cap.’ (_A Room With A View_) 

**Penge, June 1908**

Penge was deadly dull. It always had been so but this year it was about as much as a chap could cheerfully bear. Mealtimes were the worst of all. Freddy had developed an excellent method to get through the ritual round of breakfast, morning tea, luncheon, afternoon tea, sherry, dinner, port and cheese, the hinges around which Penge days opened and closed. He found that if he concentrated very hard on the exact thing he was eating or drinking and thought about nothing else but _it_ until his plate was clean, the minutes of the meal would eventually tick over and give way to a whole stretch of hours when he might escape, if only to doze or pick out tunes on the piano. But however one cut it, it was a wretched waste of a whole week of one's summer. 

When Freddy was younger, Clive Durham had usually been at home for the Honeychurch family’s annual visit. Despite being only two years older than Freddy, Clive had seemed almost like a grown-up, too serious to want to go tree-climbing or exploring. He was always talked about as being so frightfully clever although he could be jolly once they were away from adult company. One summer it had rained every moment but Clive had a ripping train set and they constructed it together so that it stretched from one end of his bedroom to the other. It was Clive who had given Freddy the first few stamps which began his collection: two Indian beauties, a Jubilee 5d and even a Penny Black, only a little torn at one corner.

But this year, Clive was on a College reading retreat and Lucy was still in beastly Italy, so all the weight of social duty lay on Freddy’s reluctant shoulders. 

The visit to Penge had become a mainstay of the Honeychurch social year after the deaths of Mr Honeychurch and Mr Durham had occurred, with melancholy coincidence, in the same year. Mr Honeychurch had been acting as Mr Durham’s solicitor during the sale of the last of the Penge estate’s interests in London, and the two gentlemen had found themselves _sympatico_ on the matter of new building and property management. This mutual interest, in addition to an enjoyment of cigars and port which may well have hastened their premature ends, had resulted in an invitation for the Honeychurch family to Penge. While Mrs Honeychurch was clearly not to be widely introduced in county society, Mrs Durham considered herself to be enlightened in matters touching on the mixing of the classes and there was certainly no deficit of income to make anyone feel awkward. Moreover, little Miss Honeychurch was decidedly promising. She was charming, despite being fourteen, which she would grow out of, and her playing was exquisite. She knew when to be quiet and was an able and committed listener, even to Clive at his most trying.

So the widows had found reason to maintain their friendship. Mrs Honeychurch frequently mentioned to her friends that it was pleasant for the children to be introduced in such circles. Plus, her observations of the Penge housekeeping gleaned over a week’s stay in Spring were enough to keep the gossips of Summer Street engrossed until Christmas.

Despite these enticements, it must be owned that Freddy and Mrs Honeychurch were not their usual comfortable selves at Penge. If it were only Mrs Durham they would have managed perfectly well and Miss Durham was sweet and gentle, with pretty blue eyes which had caused Freddy to be horribly in love with her for several days during the last visit. However, Penge was not just the family, but a vast array of servants, indoor and outdoor, upstairs and downstairs, some of whom could be spoken to, others who must not be addressed, and all of whom were to be treated with a kind of amused disdain, no matter how useful they were making themselves by dint of lighting one’s fire or serving one roast beef or drawing one’s bath. It was quite different to the way the family servants were lived with at Windy Corner, where their faults might have been known and widely canvassed, but their virtues were valued and broadcast to an equal degree. At thirteen, Freddy had spent part of the holidays at his friend Dent’s London home and to the amusement of all at Windy Corner had come home rather grand. He had experimented with calling the servants by their surnames and they in turn began to call him "Mr Honeychurch Sir” in a very stiff and unfriendly manner which was extremely discomfiting. Freddy had borne it for an afternoon before putting his blushing face around the kitchen door to plead, “I say Mary, do let's be ordinary again.” He had been Mr Freddy ever since and all the happier for it, even though his mother said he would have to become "Mr Honeychurch Sir" really and truly when he was master of Windy Corner.

The dread fate of that grown-up world was very close now. Despite his pipe and his medical textbooks, Freddy was still very much a boy, and his most closely-guarded secret was how very much he longed to _stay_ a boy. In lecture halls or drawing rooms, he would fall into dreams, not of worldly glory or martial triumph, but of play: if he could have spent his whole life as one long afternoon at the Sacred Lake, with Lucy, he would have been entirely content. But the world required him to button his blazer and pick up his pen; he must turn his attention to the scraping together of sufficient knowledge and a reasonable enough degree to convince the world that he was a man. He had known his duty since he was eleven and the Headmaster had come, actually come himself, to fetch Freddy out of Latin prep in order to tell him that Mr Honeychurch was dead. 

“You must be the man now and comfort your mother,” old Mathers had said. He had not been unkind. He had not told Freddy to stop crying in the dreadful moments after he had said the words and then been forced to repeat them when Freddy had not at first been able to comprehend what they meant. However, once the business of comforting Mother had been mentioned, Freddy understood that it was time to pull himself together and cease blubbing and attend to what he was being told. “And don’t you have a sister?”

“Yes Sir, Lucy, but she’s older than me.”

“Well, you must be brother and father to her now. You must learn to stand between your mother and sister and the world, d’you understand? Work hard so that they need never want, and stay decent so they need never be ashamed of you.”

The idea that he should be father to Lucy was so silly that had he not felt so terribly sad he might have giggled. When he told her the story a few days later, mimicking the Headmaster’s solemn manner, and his lisp, they fell into hysterical, howling laughter. They had sneaked away from the funeral tea to hide in the old nursery and when Mother heard them and found them, they pretended to be crying, which made her clutch them up and cry herself, and then they wept in earnest, all three of them, clinging together by the toy chest. 

At home, at least, boyhood was not irrevocably lost and the most sombre of clinicians must admit that the life of a medical student is as much taken up with games as grind, but a place like Penge called Freddy into early assumption of his beckoning maturity. He knew he must be good, for Mother, and brush back his hair and sit up straight, but it was a trial and a torment to a fellow’s very soul to be so confined.

On the second day of their visit, a collection of ladies arrived for afternoon tea with Mrs Durham and had swiftly covered a number of topics without need of applying to Freddy for his opinion on any of them. They had addressed in some depth the failings of Reverend Borenius’ new curate and his wife, who was beyond anything and could not be prevented from bringing the needs of the poor into even the most pleasantly idle of conversations. They had also discussed Lucy’s itinerary in Italy, and the company gave Mrs Honeychurch a good deal of advice about who could be known in and around Rome and who should be avoided at all costs. 

Freddy knew very well his mother’s preoccupation with making acquaintance with the right sort of people and strenuously avoiding the wrong. Her marriage had lifted her an inch more securely into the sphere of rightness from where she had begun and Windy Corner was long established as one of the rightest places in their part of Surrey. But Mrs Durham and her ladies were far more than just the right sort, they were the sort who decided on the sorts in the first place. Freddy felt a discombobulating mix of fierce love and frustration when he watched his mother with them: she was so awfully stiff and watchful and spoke with none of her usual dash and laughter. It was impossible to say how they did it, and women were damnably difficult to understand at any time, but even Freddy could tell that they had one tone of voice for each other, and another for her. He rather hated them.

A conversation began about the impossibility of trusting maids to pack a trunk without constant vigilance, and suddenly Freddy knew that he must be outside or he would commit some unforgivable outrage. Before he could stop himself, or his mother could speak over him and deflect his outburst he had put his teacup down with a rattle and said, too loudly, “May I swim?”

His mother’s expression told him that he had spoken like a barbarian, and there was fuss, of course, about the certainty of rain and the dangers of swimming so soon after eating fruit cake, _two_ pieces of fruit cake, indeed, it was noted, but he also sensed that they would not sorrow over his leaving, which would allow them to discuss topics which could not be mentioned in his presence. Mrs Durham would insist on a maid being called and instructions issued to fetch up one of the outdoor towels for Mr Honeychurch’s use. Duly outfitted, Freddy was released.

But oh, how jolly to be outside and under the sky! He skipped a little as took the gravel path into the grounds, his brown towel rolled under his arm, and as soon as he was out of sight of the house and uncaring of whether he was out of earshot of the ladies in the garden room, which he was not, he expressed his feelings with a great whoop and ran in the direction of the lake. 

He had bathed there once before, during the summer when he and Clive had been most together. Clive had not been allowed to go into the water. He was convalescing from the illness which had taken him from school mid-term and there was much discussion of the state of his chest, so he had rowed while Freddy swam.

The boathouse would have been the best place to change but it was nearly halfway round on the other side of the lake and Freddy was reluctant to wait even a moment. There was a large, flattish rock by a dip in the bank and he made it his changing room. No-one was in sight and Freddy felt there was no need for the old-fashioned and cumbersome bathing suit which the maid had rolled into the towel. He stripped swiftly, nearly tearing his collar in his eagerness to be free of it and chucked his clothes into an untidy pile on the bank. Naked, he allowed himself one full stretch up under the sky then plunged into the cold water, chest first, hooting and puffing, silty clouds billowing up where his feet sank into the mud. He propelled himself out towards the middle of the lake with the queer sideways stroke that no swimming master had been able to train him out of. The reeds reached up through the water and insinuated themselves about his body, streaming against his legs as he swam.

He paddled the width of the lake until he reached the boathouse jetty and rested there for a while. 

A black cloud frowned at him from the west and there was the suggestion of drizzle but the wind only whispered across the surface of the water so he set off on a dogged lap, giving the ducks a snatch of _Pinafore_ as they quacked and flapped out of his path. It was ripping to move after the stillness of the chilly rooms of the house and to sing as loudly as one liked, even if the price was a mouthful of reedy water for every chorus.

His lap brought him back to the jetty just as the drizzle he had barely noticed as he made his way around the lake quickened into rain, and swiftly became heavy, pocking the water’s surface in a drumbeat of drops. The hazy sun disappeared for good behind a solid line of cloud and the wind picked up, changing the friendly little ripples to chiding waves which came at him from all directions. His ears were cold. 

Freddy thought about getting out and running round back to his rock but decided that death by drowning was a preferable fate to a meeting _en déshabillé_ with someone from the house, so he kept swimming, turning onto his back to give his arms a rest. It was hard-going with the wind against him. The reeds caught at his ankles and elbows, holding and tugging him down. A duck got its revenge by landing nearby with a tremendous splash and startling him so that he lost his stroke and went underwater. He flipped back to his front, spluttering, and was disheartened to see he still had some way to go to reach the bank and that he had been going diagonally rather than straight. When he adjusted his direction he had another terrible fright which made him duck involuntarily and swallow another pint or two. A man stood by his rock, a servant, shrouded in a cap and an overcoat, with a gun hanging from one shoulder. He was holding Freddy’s bundle of clothes and as Freddy trod water, he opened his coat and stuffed them in against himself. 

The man beckoned, and Freddy began to swim again, the rain obscuring his vision and his shoulders aching from the effort. When he got to his rock, he stretched to catch and moor himself and peered up at the figure on the bank. He was young, not much older than Freddy.

Freddy decided to brazen it out. “Hullo there,” he called. "I'm swimming."

“I seen you go in Sir. And I hope I don’t take a liberty but I was worried for your clothes. Why did you not go the boathouse to change?”

There was no answer to this sensible question and Freddy was quite taken up with the problem of how he was to emerge from the lake but the young man crouched and shot out his hand and there was no option then but to grasp it and allow himself to be hauled, naked, dripping and shivering, onto the muddy bank.

“Here, your things are soaked,” the servant said and slid off his coat, keeping Freddy’s clothes under his arms. He hung it over Freddy’s shoulders and picked up Freddy’s shoes, which Freddy noticed he had turned over, soles upwards, on the grass, so that they should not get wet inside.

"Come and get dry if you like, Sir.” Freddy’s rescuer bent his head towards him so as to be heard over the rain. “My hut is just yonder…”

Freddy nodded his rather dazed agreement, the impossibility of returning to the house with only a sodden towel and a servant’s coat to protect him from Mrs Durham’s icy stare was quite clear.

“Thanks… er…”

“Scudder, Sir.”

Scudder touched his cap and started off in the direction of the woods. Freddy scrambled after, clutching the coat around him. The rain seemed to redouble, as if it was determined to make him as wet as it possibly could before he was out of its clutches and he slipped on the sopping grass more than once. It was a little easier when they reached a path under the trees but then he stood on a thorn and only just managed not to squeal. 

“This way Sir,” Scudder called over his shoulder, and pointed. There was a clearing, in which stood a small hut, with a rack bearing a string of dead rabbits by the door. Freddy was reminded of fairy tales and the fates of children who got lost in woods, but there was little choice now but to follow Scudder towards whatever dreadful fate awaited him.

It was dim inside. Freddy stood dripping and shivering on the rough flagstones. There was one window set lop-sided into one of the white-washed walls, a pallet in one corner, with two rolled blankets and a pillow neatly stacked upon it. A shelf, a chair, and a grate piled with newspaper and shards of wood completed the domestic arrangements. Scudder took off his cap, and shook himself, raindrops flew. He fetched matches from his little shelf and went on his haunches to attend to the grate.

“One moment Sir and I’ll have a fire.” 

Freddy’s teeth were chattering but he managed to say, “It’s very good of you..er...” He had forgotten the name.

“Scudder. I’m Scudder, under-gamekeeper to the Durhams.”

“I’m...”

“Mr Honeychurch, I know who yer are,” Scudder looked at him over his shoulder. “I seen you arriving yesterday. I carried your big bag.”

Freddy was guiltily aware that he had not noticed Scudder at all. He remembered only trying not to trip up the steps under the Butler’s gimlet eye.

“Here, Sir, come and get warm. We’ll put yer things to dry. You'll catch yer death if you go back to the ’ouse with wet hair in this rain. I don’t have no trousers but there’s a shirt here…” He rooted in a crate in the corner and pulled out a large shirt, handing it to Freddy, suddenly uncertain. “If you don’t mind it, I know it’s not what you’d choose.”

Scudder also found him a square of rough towelling, ragged round the edges, but clean enough. Freddy thought about the piles of thick white towels in his bathroom up at the house but it would have been unsoldierly to hesitate and so he shrugged off the coat and hung it on a rather threatening-looking hook set into the one low ceiling beam and dried himself as best he could, pulling on the shirt when he was damp rather than wet.

Scudder had taken one of the blankets from the pallet and folded it in front of the fire and Freddy recognised this as the place of honour so he sat on it to rub at his hair. Beginning to get warm, he let out a skull-cracker of a yawn, and realised that his panicky swim and run in the rain had exhausted him. His legs were trembling. Scudder had been crouching by the fire, watching him, but now he went back to his shelf and brought down a cracked plate, on which lay two apricots and a handful of raspberries. 

“From the greenhouse,” he said. “You won’t tell on me though?” 

He grinned and he looked just like any boy, grinning, so Freddy smiled back and said “No fear!” just as he would have to Floyd and took an apricot.

“They don’t notice if I nicks a bit here and there.” Scudder ate his apricot in two bites and spat the stone into the fire. Freddy copied, but his stone hit the grate and skidded back across the floor towards him. Scudder laughed. It was a nice laugh, not a jeer.

“You warming up, Sir?” he asked.

Freddy nodded, "Getting nicely browned, thank you."

“Like a beer?”

“Wouldn’t I! I mean,” Freddy tried to regain some sense of dignity, “if you can spare it.”

Two bottles emerged out of that useful crate and Scudder prised their tops off with his hands.

Freddy took his bottle and wondered if drinking beer with servants and using their towels meant that he was now a Bolshevist. He hoped not, because the Vicar at home would laugh at him and ask him questions he couldn't answer, and he'd have to go to Socialist meetings in the upstairs rooms of pubs and wear rough pullovers and likely have to share his tobacco with the other Bolshevists.

Still a little heavy in his limbs, but feeling more himself, Freddy looked about him. If he had indeed been the political sort, he might have noted the vast difference between the room he occupied in the Durhams’ house and Scudder’s board bed and makeshift grate. If he had been the poetic sort, he might have been moved by the way the hut seemed to have grown organically from the forest floor, he may even have noticed that with his dark hair, the brown skin of his face and hands and the healthy pink of his lip and cheek, Scudder, too, seemed to belong to the earth and the trees. As it was, he was only Freddy Honeychurch and he simply thought that Scudder seemed very decent and that it would splendid to have such a hideaway and live in the woods and to be so utterly unfussed over.

“Jolly place you have here,” he said.

Scudder stared. “This i'n't my _house_,” he said. “Garn, what do you think I am? I stay out here if I’ve to watch for poachers or when I have to be up for the young birds. I’ve got a room by the stables and I can eat in the kitchen when I like. It’s my right to - and the girls’d be pleased if I did that’s for certain.” He took a pull of his beer. “All things considered, I like to be out here better. No-one to complain about me bringin’ mud in.” His frowned as he remembered some past slight and muttered, “mud what’s only there because I’m a-doin’ of my duties for Mrs Durham and attendin’ to the dirty work what no-one else will stoop to.”

“They hate it when I leave my bones about,” Freddy said, sympathetically, “but they’re on me soon enough if don’t hammer at my books every moment.”

“Are you at Mr Durham’s College then?”

“Not I, I’m at King’s. In London.” Freddy’s school had suggested that the Cambridge Entrance Exam was perhaps not for him and that London would be more his style. “I’m awfully dim you see.” 

Scudder stared at him. “You don’t sound like yer dim.”

“Oh I’m alright when it’s things you can see and make sense of, it’s only when they start in on poetry and all that.”

“All what?”

Freddy sighed. It was so hard to explain. His whole school career had been taken up with a series of baffling encounters with bodies of knowledge which seemed broadly interchangeable and included the Gospels, the French language, the Punic Wars, the verse of Dryden, the Tudor Acts of Succession and the dative case. The details of each block of learning had to be stuffed into one’s mind like it was a badly packed case, until an examination had been taken, after which it could be emptied to make way for the next bundle. Anatomy had at least the virtue of staying still and being unambiguous. One only had to try and remember what fastened on to what and half the battle was won.

“Oh all the stuff they jaw about.”

“I wouldn’t know. I can read and write alright but I didn’t go to school much once I was working. So what will you do, when you’ve finished at your College?”

“I shall be a doctor.”

“That’s good money.” Scudder said. “Mind, you’d have to be paid proper with all that horrible stuff they do. Looking at old women’s bums.”

“I say!” Freddy paled. “It’s nothing like that. It’s all chambers of the heart and so forth, tibias and fibias and …” a vision of the lists of Latin terms in his anatomy textbook swam before him and he felt the familiar lurch of sickened dread at the effort it would take to force them into his memory and sighed. “You’re right. It _is_ horrible.”

“I'n't my idea of how to live.”

“Mine neither,” said Freddy. “But I must do something.”

“Why, if you don’t like it?”

“Oh, for Mother. And the house.”

Scudder leaned over to encourage the fire then settled back. Their elbows knocked as they tipped their bottles to drink.

“Did you.. being a keeper…” Freddy wanted to ask Scudder what his idea of how to live was but it seemed abominably nosy and he knew his mother would not approve of encouraging servants to talk in this way. However, Scudder seemed to understand.

“My dad… my father, ’e’s a butcher but my older brother’s ’prenticed to him and I’m glad there’s not room for me too. Ent no opportunities there. Least here I can go about as I like. Old Ayres, _Mr_ Ayres I mean, he’s head-keeper, says if I do well I can take over from him but I dunno. He’s a hundred years old already and he’ll drop dead in his boots.”

Scudder tilted his head back to get the last drops of his beer and gestured to the window.

“It’s stoppin’ rainin’.”

“I should get back. It'll be dinner soon enough and sherry before..." Freddy sighed over the tyranny of meal-times.

“You want another beer? I’ve only one left. If you don’t mind sharin’.”

“Rather.” Freddy was drowsy and happy and he did not want to leave. Outlaw beer with Scudder was infinitely preferable to sherry with Mrs Durham. He watched as Scudder levered the top of the bottle and took first dibs before holding it out to him, two blunt fingers round its neck.

“There you go _Mr_ Honeychurch.” He emphasised the ‘Mr’ in a way which let Freddy know that if he wiped the bottle before he drank then any friendliness between them would be over. 

Freddy drank. There was moisture on the rim, where Scudder’s mouth had been. If Scudder had been his own sort of chap he could have made a joke about not wanting to taste his spit. The beer tasted different from this bottle, it was warm and sweet, honey-flavoured. He drank half of it down in two deep swallows and handed the bottle back and Scudder tipped it up to his own lips then dragged the back of his hand over his mouth.

“Funny name, ‘Honeychurch’.” Scudder drank, swallowed. “You sweet then?”

Freddy didn’t mind the tease. In his first term as a boarder they’d called him ‘Treacle’ and there were jokes about tarts which he’d not understood at first, but then he’d made it into the Lower School First XI and thrashed Frobisher and they had shut up about it. After that he’d been ‘Honeypot’ for a while, which was not as bad as ‘Treacle’, and by Upper School he was known only as ‘Pottles’.

He tried to think of some insult about Scudder’s name and opened his mouth to see if one would emerge, but Scudder shifted, leaned in and put his finger on Freddy’s lower lip, pressed lightly.

“You sweet, Mr Honeychurch?” he said, again.

Freddy’s head was swimming from the beer and he was warm all through. Scudder was very close, the outdoor smell of his jacket was rough and likeable. Freddy opened his mouth a little, just a little, and Scudder put another finger to his lips and pushed them further apart, gently, as Mrs Honeychurch did when she was checking a budding rose for greenfly.

“Have you? With a lad?” Scudder said quietly. “Or another gentleman?”

Freddy swallowed. “At school.” 

At school, in that first term when they had called him Treacle, there had been a boy who had made him. The boy was older and Freddy was said to be pretty and that was the order of things. Freddy would rather have not, with him at least, but it had only been for a term and after that there had only been the boys Freddy had said ‘yes’ to. 

“Come on then,” said Scudder and put his hand on him, between his legs, over his borrowed shirt, and kissed him.

At school, when one fellow went into another fellow’s bed it was important not to talk and even more important not to do anything that looked like 'mush'. Kissing was mush. It wasn’t done to enjoy it too much beyond the basic release or one was a tart. It wasn’t done to have too great a preference for one chap over another or ever to make a daylight allusion to anything that had happened in the dark.

Scudder went about things differently, which was only to be expected but still took Freddy by surprise. He kissed Freddy a good deal, on his mouth, with a forceful insistence, and then on his neck and his shoulders, dragging the shirt down so he could get at his collarbone. He was not at all shy and more than once held Freddy by the back of the neck and gave him a little shake until Freddy looked him in the eye. A combination of the strangeness of the situation and the beer melted the last edges of his reserve and he strained up into Scudder’s warm grip and found himself lost in the sweetness of the feeling. He hadn’t felt the touch of any hand but his own for a long time and Scudder’s fingers were deft and gentle, coaxing him until he was full and hard in his palm and hurtling towards the end with embarrassing speed.

“I say, I’m..” he gasped but Scudder said only, ‘it’s alright Sir” and worked him faster.

His whole body was jumped into a pleasure that he felt from his scalp to his toes and he could not help a little cry leaving his lips, couldn’t help gripping Scudder’s wrist to still the movements before they became too much for his tender skin. He came to, panting and saw Scudder wiping his hand on his own trousers. 

He felt timid and uncertain again, and he was unsure whether he should reciprocate. Scudder gave him a wolfish sort of grin and Freddy was about, perhaps, to offer when he heard a voice, more than one: shouts from somewhere outside.

Scudder sprang up and tossed Freddy his damp clothes and Freddy, jolted out of his pleasurable haze, began to pull them on in wordless panic. The cries were not close but, he realised, with horror, they were calling his name.

Scudder cocked his head and listened. “They’re at the lake,” he said and laughed. “They must think you’ve drowned.”

“Oh,” said Freddy, crawling for his shoes. “I’m going to be in such a row.”

“Don’t be saying you was here. I’ll catch it from Mr Simcox. I’m not supposed to talk to you direct.”

They looked at each other and shared the thought of the grim Simcox knowing what had passed between them.

“I won’t, I swear. I’ll say... ah… dash it, I’ll come up with something. They all think I’m a chump anyway. Where’s my other shoe?”

*******  
He _was_ in a row. The cat was flung about all that afternoon and well into the evening. He was still in disgrace for causing such an uproar and disrupting the household the following morning. Mother said that she would rather he _had_ drowned than have caused her such embarrassment but then he had a fit of sneezing over breakfast and her pique was overcome by worry for his health. She was sure he had caught a chill. Chests were sacrosanct in the Durham household because of Clive’s infirmities, and the doctor was spoken of until Freddy showed them he was quite well by running up and down the stairs several times. Nevertheless, it was agreed that it would be for the best if Freddy was left behind while the ladies went out to make their calls.

He footled on the piano for a while and thought about asking for tea but was too nervous to ring the bell. He was relieved that Mrs Durham had suggested he have a cold luncheon on a tray in his room which meant he was spared having to be served in lonely pomp by Simcox and after seeing off a couple of jolly good sandwiches, he hauled out his textbooks. With a sigh, he heaved open his _Principles and Practice of Medicine: Designed for the Use of Practitioners and Students of Medicine_ and, not for the first time, cursed the name of Hippocrates and all his disciples.

Freddy had slept well, after his adventure, and a large dinner, but a certain discomfort had unsettled his usually placid mind. Quite apart from the physical surprise of his encounter, to which his mind had returned with a kind of greedy curiosity in odd snatches through his dreams, there lurked an uneasy feeling that he had not behaved properly. He should not have taken his pleasure and then left Scudder, with no return. It was not fair. Freddy turned these thoughts over in his mind with difficulty. Of course, it was a dreadfully wrong sort of thing to have done. It might be permissible between two fellows at school; it was expected behaviour, to a certain degree. But now here he was nearly a grown-up and he should have left all that behind, and what’s more, Scudder was a servant and one was always to treat servants with firm kindness. ‘Firm kindness’ was a favourite phrase of Summer Street. Was it not unkind to have bolted yesterday? And did it not show a firmer purpose to believe a servant would have feelings which should be respected and that one should not drink their beer and … and ... allow unusual intimacies, without due consideration of such feelings?

There was only one thing to be done. He closed his book with sudden decision. The chambers of the heart could wait. He must find Scudder and apologise. It was the gentlemanly thing to do.

*******

“Never showed you that, ent they?”

“No, they ent,” agreed Freddy, spreading his legs a little further. 

Scudder had been at his hut, skinning the hung-up rabbits, when Freddy arrived, and had seemed uninterested in apologies. He had let Freddy blush and stumble his way through a few ill-formed attempts at firm kindness, and then had risen and gone inside. Freddy had followed, twirling his boater and wishing his blazer were not quite so pink.

Scudder had taken the boater and put it on his own head. Freddy found he did not like this. The hat made Scudder’s face, which was nice-looking and open, especially when he smiled, look squashed and comic. So he had taken it back and hung it on the sinister hook.

And then Scudder had borne him to the floor and taken off all their clothes piece by piece and put not only his hands but his tongue on him and then his whole mouth and Freddy had not known it was possible to feel so carried away. It was better than climbing a tree in the wind and hitting a boundary and being laughing-drunk with Floyd and seeing Lucy and Mother’s faces again after a term at school and curtain-up at the theatre, all at once. Being with Scudder was no more like the desultory fumbles at school than bathing in the Sacred Lake was like swimming lengths in the municipal pool.

He forgot himself and clutched at Scudder’s hair, feeling the slip of his curls between his fingers and bit his own lips as he felt Scudder’s mouth encircle him and the unbelievable, unfathomable wet heat drove every thought from him and melted him into that wonderful mindlessness.

Afterwards, Scudder brought out the raspberries from the day before, or perhaps they were newly stolen. They were bright and sharp in Freddy’s mouth and stained Scudder’s lips like drops of blood. They wrestled for the last one and although Scudder was certainly stronger, he allowed Freddy to best him and straddle him. Freddy wanted to play but he didn’t know how, with this strange boy. He looked down at him, panting. He was holding Scudder’s wrists across his body, pinning him with them.

Now,” he said, in an indifferent imitation of Dr Samuels, his Anatomy tutor, “what do we call these?”

“What? Wrists?”

“The correct term for the bones of the wrist, please?”

Scudder shrugged.

“Carpals. Here, the metatarsals,” he locked their fingers for a moment. “And the phalanges.”

“Why don’t you call them by their proper names?”

“I don’t know. So we sound important I suppose. Now here we have your ulna, and round here, your tibia.” 

He ran his fingers up to Scudder’s shoulder, followed with his mouth and bit. “Scapula,” he said to Scudder’s neck. “Clavicle.” Then again, because he liked the sound of it in his mouth, against the thing itself, “Cla-vi-cle.”

He put his fingertips on Scudder’s lips, and traced them, murmured “The cavum oris…”

“And what about this Mr Clever Doctor?” Scudder took Freddy’s hand, and stroked it down his chest, and pressed it to his cock. Freddy maintained his professional tone and said, “Why, that is your membrum virile.”

“Well then, you should put your… your…” he gestured at Freddy’s mouth.

“Cavum oris?”

“Yes, on my...oh, stop with yer foolin and suck me if you’ve a mind to.”

Freddy had a mind to and he felt mildly competitive about it. He wanted to show Scudder that the rules of _quid pro quo_ applied even across the classes. Scudder lay quite still and Freddy worried that he was doing it wrong somehow. It had not been part of the repertoire at school and it was certainly strange at first but Freddy found he liked it very much; Scudder was so quiet and only said “Oh Sir, Mr Honeychurch…” once Freddy had shifted so that he could get all the way down as Scudder had been able to do to him. There was something not right about being called ‘Sir’ like this and Freddy would perhaps have said something if he were not fully occupied. It was a delightful thing to feel that one could be so close and friendly with someone so unlike oneself. Perhaps there was something to be said for Bolshevism.

Scudder surged against him and gasped, “Sir, I do advise… for I shall…” but Freddy would not be cowardly about it and held fast, drawing Scudder ever closer to him and feeling himself useful in a way he was rarely permitted to be.

They lay together afterwards, shoulder to shoulder. They dozed, then had a fit of restless, mutual touching, without particular focus. Freddy tickled Scudder until he swore, and Scudder flipped Freddy over, suddenly fierce, and kissed the back of his neck, licked his nape, growled in his ear, “Yer not so different are you? Clothes off, we’re the same you and me. I always thought it would be different with a gentleman.”

Freddy wriggled his way onto his back again. “We do look a little alike, you and me.”

“‘Cept for all your stupid hair. Don’t it get on your nerves in yer eyes all the time?”

“Don’t it get on _your_ nerves?” Freddy retorted, tugging on the curl across Scudder’s forehead. Impulsively, he twirled it around his finger, tugged, brought Scudder’s mouth down to his own again. A mischievous thought occurred to him.

“I say, we could change clothes. You could go back in the house and be Freddy and I could stay here and live in the woods.”

Scudder laughed and sneered, “You wouldn’t last one night.”

“And you couldn’t do my exams.”

“I bet you I could, if I was shown how.” Freddy didn’t doubt it. If a dolt like himself could, then surely anyone could.

“But I wouldn’t know how to do your manners and your la-di-dah, they’d know alright,” said Scudder gloomily, as if he had really been considering the possibility.

The thought that they were, in fact, themselves, and must remain so, seemed to remind them each of their respective duties and they drew reluctantly apart. 

Safely stuffed back into his pink blazer, Freddy took his hat from the alarming hook with a sigh. 

“Ugh, the endless talking,” he said, thinking of dinner. “You’re so lucky, on your own out here.”

Scudder was lacing his heavy boots, and his glance skirted round the bare room before he looked up at Freddy from under his cap. 

“Lucky? Is that what you’d call it Sir?”

Freddy blushed, conscious of having blundered but unsure of the way back to their former ease.

“I just meant that…”

“Never mind Sir. Come now, I hear the church bell. You had better leave first and I’ll follow on.”

*******  
Freddy was late to dinner, skidding into the dining room still tugging on his dinner jacket and was dismayed to find they were to be joined by a couple of extra ladies, plus a church fellow. He slid into his seat under his mother’s glare and the church fellow intoned grace. 

Simcox came round doling out the soup in that creeping-up-on-one way the Penge servants had, and Freddy felt a slight tug behind his ear. “Do excuse me Sir. A leaf,” Simcox muttered, “in your hair.” 

Freddy’s mealtime trick did not serve him so reliably as usual. For one thing, the church fellow, Mr Borenius, would not let him be and wanted to talk to him about missions in the East End hospitals and clubs for the youth of the city, worthy projects in which Freddy supposed he should be interested, now that he was a friend of the working classes. But even in the moments when he was left alone to focus first on his soup, and then on each bite of chop, and then a rather watery syllabub, he found his mind slipping to Scudder and himself and what they had done together. Under his clothes, Scudder was white and smooth. His forearms and neck were brown and his hands were rough and calloused: they wore his work. Freddy had been a little ashamed at how soft his own were; Scudder had noticed too but had kissed his knuckles, curled out his tongue to lick at them and said “Book hands, you’ve got.” Then Scudder’s rough fingers on him, _in_ him (Freddy blushed down at his plate) had driven him to such frenzy. He could barely believe it of himself.

And yet, it was queer that it should not have felt stranger, all of it. It was stranger to have to sit and eat syllabub and try to think of something more to say than “Yes, just the ticket” to Mr Borenius’ proposals for a gentlemen and lads’ football team than it had done to lie down with Scudder and be with him.

That night Freddy dreamed of Scudder and the lake. He dreamed that the reeds were catching at his ankles and pulling him under. Mother was on the boathouse jetty and he shouted but she couldn’t hear him. Lucy was there too, in a rowing boat with Clive Durham. Then Scudder was swimming alongside him. They were both naked and Scudder caught him round the waist and held him up.

The dream woke him: it was only just dawn and he went to his window, opening it to the misty air. He thought for a mad moment of climbing out, of running through the woods, but the cold sent him back to his eiderdown and he slept again.

He didn’t wake again until Simcox knocked with tea and then knocked again some time later to inform him that breakfast would be cleared shortly if Mr Honeychurch would be so _very_ kind as to descend and partake. He bolted his kippers as Simcox ostentatiously waited by his elbow to whisk his plate away as soon as he laid his knife and fork down.

He found his mother and Mrs Durham in the garden room with the morning letters. Freddy had only a bill from his tailor which he folded guiltily into his pocket. There was a long letter from Lucy which Mrs Honeychurch handed to him, saying, “She’s in the Alps now. Imagine! Charlotte is unhappy with their hotel because there are Americans. There’s a note for you about a lake she saw with people bathing and something about a red boat.”

Freddy took the letter and skipped through the parts about the travel and the marvellous views and etc. 

“Ugh! Cecil Vyse is still stuck to them!” he said. “Poor Lucy.”

“What’s that?” asked Mrs Durham.

“Oh nothing,” said Mrs Honeychurch.”Freddy dear, do refrain from…” 

“He’s the most most awful bore. Apparently he’s taking them around as he did in Rome and now Lucy’s stranded in the Alps with no escape. She can’t even toboggan away I daresay, this time of year, not enough snow. Rotten luck for her.”

He looked up and realised that his mother was glaring at him.

“Are you speaking of Mr Vyse of the Chelsea Vyses?” asked Mrs Durham.

“I don’t know which Vyses precisely,” Freddy replied, “but I know I wouldn’t want to be stuck up a mountain with Cecil.”

“How pleasant for dear Miss Honeychurch,” said Mrs Durham, folding her own letters, “that she should have a knowledgeable gentleman to be her guide. Shall I ring for tea?”

*******  
Lunch was a quiet affair. Mrs Honeychurch and Mrs Durham exchanged only a few sentences and left Freddy alone to concentrate his way through each mouthful of his cutlet and lemon posset, and then both ladies retired to their rooms to rest. Freddy kicked his way restlessly around the house, getting in the way of maids and avoiding Simcox. He sent a thought in the direction of his textbooks but decided first to write a note to be included in his mother’s reply to Lucy:

**Dear Loobie,**  
**Stuck at Penge STOP Send help STOP No fun to be had STOP Bathed in rain STOP Everyone believed Honeychurch Son and Heir drowned and dead STOP Wailing and lamentations ensued STOP Only not really, they didn’t care a jot. Biff Cecil Vyse on the nose for me and hide his ridiculous eyepiece. I miss you awfully Loobie. ** **Yours, F.H. esq. **

He drew her a little cartoon of himself downing in the lake, folded it and went to see if his mother had sealed her letter yet. She was awake and packing, and took his note with a distracted air.

“Mrs Durham has just been in to say that she has recollected an appointment in London and must be on the noon train tomorrow so we’re to leave a little early dear, do have your things ready by the morning and we can get a good start. The car will take us to the station directly after breakfast. Go and have a run around this afternoon so you’re not too fidgety in the journey.”

This was ripping news and the sun came out properly for the first time that week when Freddy ran out into the grounds, as per instructions. He considered having another swim but thought better of it and walked instead, for some time, idly and without direction. He circled through the woods and found himself close to Scudder’s hut but there was no sign of him. He loitered a little while, just in case, but gave up eventually and wandered back to the lake to skim stones at the ducks. 

He took a winding route back round to the house and as he turned in from the shrubbery, he heard raised voices and came upon Scudder, an older fellow, and the dreaded Simcox in a huddle outside the stables. 

“‘E ought not to ‘ave done it Mr Simcox and I’d be obliged…” the old gardener sort was saying in a tremulous, complaining voice, but Scudder spoke over him, evidently in a temper.

“But it makes no sense the way 'e…”

“You'll remember your place and be civil to _Mr_ Ayres, Scudder,” said Simcox. 

“It makes no _sense_ the way Mr Ayres wants it done. We’ll only have to repeat the work for the wire don’t sit right and harms the trees... ”

“It’s how I’ve allus done the fences Mr Simcox,” Mr Ayres said in an injured tone, “and I won't have no Johnny-come-lately a-telling of me how to do my work.”

Freddy froze and started to step backwards but it was too late, he had been seen. Now he had to carry on his path past the trio and try not to fall over his feet.

Mr Ayres and Scudder touched their caps but Scudder did not meet his eyes, he was looking down and away.

Simcox said, “Good afternoon Mr Honeychurch Sir. Would you be wanting another bathe Sir?”

“I don’t think so... er... jolly of you to ask but... but...”

“Or perhaps you’d like to take a gun out Sir. Scudder here is idling the afternoon away and could do with something to occupy him.”

Scudder scuffed at the gravel with his boot and still avoided Freddy's eye.

“Oh I’m not really…”

“Very good Sir.”

Freddy realised he had been dismissed and cleared out, while behind him Simcox started in on Scudder again:

“You’ll do what you’re bid without complaint Alec Scudder or you’ll be out on your ear. You’re a good deal too full of yourself lad and no-one wants your smart ideas. Apologise to Mr Ayres and be off.”

There was another flurry of argument but Freddy escaped back into the garden. A moment later and he saw Scudder walking in a furious hurry away from the house and in the direction of the woods.

He followed, staying a little distance back but a few yards along the forest path Scudder called over his shoulder, “I know you’re there, crashin’ about like a elephant. You’d be no good as a keeper.”

Freddy stopped, then picked up his trot again, as Scudder strode toward his hut. He tried to move a little more quietly but it was dashed difficult to walk without making a noise, as Scudder seemed to be able to.

Freddy was panting by the time he reached the clearing. Scudder was already taking off his gun, careful despite his agitation, and leaning it against the door.

“Back for a last tumble I s'pose? Well, I ent in the mood.”

“I didn’t mean… just to say... for we’re to leave tomorrow and…”

“I _knows_. You think we don’t know all what goes on?”

For want of something to do with his hands, Freddy took out his cigarette case and patted his pockets for matches. 

“Gimme one of those,” Scudder demanded and Freddy handed the case over. “I’ve not time for you now. I’ve the birds to see to. If it i'n't one thing it’s another here.” Scudder took the matches from Freddy’s hands and lit a cigarette, with no thanks. 

“I s’pose you heard all that back there.” Scudder gestured in the direction of the house, exhaled a plume of smoke and spat. “That old Ayres, he’s bin here since the Flood and he won’t listen to sense. He wants to do things with the least trouble and work, for he’d rather laze and drink. Wooden posts and rails work best, whatever he says, for they won’t bite into the tree and spoil the bark.”

“Quite,” blurted Freddy, though he had not an idea in his head about what they were speaking of. “I suppose one just has to…”

“Has to what?”

“Do what one’s told. Or rather, duty, you know. And …. er... stick to it. Face the foe and all that. At any rate, things just tend to happen to one..." - Scudder snorted, and Freddy fumbled for a route back to the wooden posts situation - "whatever one might wish for and …” 

“I should just be glad of what I get is that what yer meanin’? What with me bein’ so _lucky_ and all?”

Freddy tried to find the words which might make them friendly again. He felt as he had done in the lake: as if he were struggling to keep afloat, the water turning cold around him, out of his depth and flailing for the bank. But he did not know what else to say or how to stay, although he would have liked to. He felt that Scudder wanted him to go.

“Well then,” he said and when there was no response, he turned and made his way back to the path.

“Mr Honeychurch!” Freddy turned. Scudder was holding out his cigarettes and matches.

“Have them,” Freddy called and wished he had more to bestow.

*******

“It has been as delightful as ever to see you, my dear Mrs Honeychurch,” said Mrs Durham, in that particular voice, “and Freddy of course. Delightful. I do hope we will see you here at Penge before long.”

Mrs Honeychurch showed no indication that she had heard the missing phrase at the end of this accustomed form of parting. It had been usual in the past to secure a promise for next year’s visit but now the fond wishes for safe journeys and best wishes for the health of the Windy Corner roses proceeded without it.

“She needn’t think she’s so very subtle. I understand her perfectly well,” Mrs Honeychurch said _sotto voce_, smiling and waving as the car pulled away. 

“Understand what?” said Freddy in sudden alarm. Had Mrs Durham said something? Had they been seen?

“Oh Freddy, what it must be to live in your dreamworld. I mean that it’s done with.” Mrs Honeychurch leant across Freddy to catch a last glimpse of the house as they drove down the long avenue towards the road. “But I believe it’s for the best. It wouldn’t suit Lucy to be buried down here. And the drawing room furniture is looking very worn.”

She sat back and brushed off her skirt with the expression of a woman who has, after some hesitation, reordered her linen cupboard and finds the new arrangement to be a vast improvement. Freddy was still trying to fathom what it was that was for the best and what it had to do with Lucy being buried and the drawing room furniture. She took his hand and gave it a sympathetic squeeze.

“It must have been a very dull week for you dear. And that dreadful syllabub. Well, you shall have a proper holiday at home. Lots of tennis, and Lucy back soon and you can bathe as much as you like. Mr Beebe will be moving in next week. I must give a tea.” She sighed and closed her eyes. “How nice it will be to be back at Windy Corner.”

As the car reached the end of the drive and slowed to turn, Freddy noticed a movement by the gatepost and, turning his head to look, met Scudder's gaze, inscrutable, observing them go by. The wind whipped away Freddy’s cap and as the car increased its speed, Freddy watched Scudder step out onto the road, pick up the cap, dust it off, and place it on his own head.

*******  
**London, October 1913**

“Have you heard this extraordinary thing about Maurice Hall?”

“Who?”

“Tall, solid-looking fellow, Hill and Hall y’know.”

“Ah yes. Second drawer.”

“Indeed. Well, he’s left Hall and Hill, Hill and Hall, whatever it may be, and _disappeared_. Mother and sisters distraught, whole place in an uproar but the best part of it is…”

“Do tell.”

“You remember that he was such _great friends_ with Clive Durham? Practically inseparable at Cambridge.” 

Freddy caught the name and surreptitiously glanced at the group of gentlemen in the neighbouring armchairs. He was at his club, the Cavendish. It had been his father’s club too and his mother was paying his first year’s membership as a graduation present. There was a preponderance of duffers among the members but there was a decent billiard table and a few chaps his own age, like Rance, who was a good sort, sitting opposite him and reading _The Times_. He had already established this as his favourite chair in the smoking room, by the window overlooking Piccadilly. If one leaned, one could see into Green Park. It was a good place to sit and pretend to read _The Lancet_ and half-listen to the pre-luncheon gossip. 

“They certainly formed quite the cosy household in Durham’s bachelor days.”

“Well, Mr Hall has _vamoosed_, and...” the man’s voice dropped a little, but his thick whisper was full of the delicious flavour of the news, as if he were tasting a rich, savoury stew, “... there is talk that the Penge estate is lately in need of a new _under-gamekeeper_.”

“No! I say! Who would have thought it of Hall? He always seemed such a stolid fellow, rather dull. But then, now I think of it, didn’t he have a charitable interest in the youth of the East End? A boxing club, wasn’t it? Well, well. So he’s thrown himself away for a piece of rural rough eh? What a charming tale.”

“Isn’t it though?”

“I hope he enjoys his idyll. He’d better get his little _gamekeeper_ out of England or he’ll be teaching boxing to his cell-mates in Pentonville.”

The gong sounded for lunch and they hauled themselves out of their armchairs, puffing at the effort and then bending their heads together to continue their enjoyable conversation.

“Shall we ascend to the trough Honeychurch?” Rance folded his paper, and Freddy closed his _Lancet_. 

They took seats at a corner table. The steward brought the soup. The gentlemanly rumble of the club flowed around him and he remembered. A rough towel. A warm hand. Apricots on a cracked plate, and rain, and the clinging touch of reeds beneath the water. Freddy buttered his roll and began to eat, one bite at a time.

**Author's Note:**

> I first talked about this fic with lj friends Zan and childeproof in *2004*, and how Scudder and Honeychurch sounded like they should own a fudge shop together. I've been writing it in my head off and on since then but Ghostcat made me finish it. 
> 
> One fussy author's note: I wanted to smush beautiful Rupert Graves' Merchant Ivory characters together but I didn't want to make a liar out of Scudder when he tells Maurice that he's 'never come to a gentleman like that before'. Sorry Alec, I guess we can get away with it by saying that it was Freddy who came to you. Or that he's not much of a gentleman.
> 
> I flat-out stole 'unsoldierly' from Forster and the title is from Mr Beebe's comment about Freddy in Kit Hesketh-Harvey and James Ivory's script: Mr Beebe finds a horrible thing on a chair and Cecil says "One of Freddy's bones" and Mr B replies, "Oh Freddy's terrible. A most unpromising youth. So unlike his sister."
> 
> etal-later on tumblr, send me Freddy pics


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